A sheet feed drum as described above is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,267. This sheet feed drum preferably has a PTFE (Teflon) coated outer surface with a circular outer contour. However, it is a disadvantage of the sheet feed drum disclosed in this patent that with the continuously circular outer contour, the sheet bends adjacent the front edge of the drum as the drum rotates because the sheet cannot be pulled off sufficiently flatly due to other inherent design features of the system. Therefore printed sheets which must satisfy high quality requirements regularly become unusable due to the resulting marking on the freshly printed underside of the sheet.
Other sheet feed drums known heretofore with textile coverings, e.g. in accordance with EP-B No. 0 036 937, U.S. Pat. No. 3,126,826, DE-B No. 1,471,728, AT-B No. 341,550, also have a circular outer contour so that the foregoing difficulties in respect of the marking of the freshly printed underside of the sheet at the front edge of the drum occur in varying degrees depending upon the properties of the covering used and its cooperation with the drum.